Corsair MP700 Pro SE 4TB Review

Final Score: 95 out of 100

Let’s face facts. In previous generations, the 2TB capacity options of a given NVMe SSD series were the best of the best. That has not changed. When focusing in on just one drive versus one drive comparisons the 2TB MP700 Pro SE is probably going to slightly edge out this 4TB variant. So if you are just buying one drive for a given build, 2TB is still the fastest capacity option available. Smaller capacity for both app+games’ and OS drives… but faster for the OS (or app+game drive).

To be precise let us give two examples of this in action. The Crucial T705 2TB variant is rated for 14.5/12.7Gbps (r/w) and 1.8/1.55 Million IOPS, versus the MP700 Pro SE 4TB’s 14.0Gbps reads, 12.0Gbps writes and 1.7/1.6 Million IOPS (r/w). Which is really not that much a difference in the grand scheme of things… especially when one takes into account the fact that at 45percent filled capacity a 4TB’ers performance is virtually indistinguishable from its empty performance; whereas that same amount of data will push 2TB’es to 90 percent capacity… where performance does fall off a noticeable, albeit small, amount. When you then mix in the fact that with one 4TB drive the OS and games and applications will all be extremely fast whereas two drives will come with a performance penalty on one of them, things are certainly not cut and dry to say the least. Especially when you then add in the fact that the MP700 Pro SE 4TB has over double the endurance rating at 3000TB vs 1400+1400TB (or 1200TB+1200TB if using T705s) Total Drive Writes.

Further muddying the waters is if one chooses to keep it to it ‘apples to apples’, a 2TB MP700 Pro SE is rated for 14.0Gbps reads, 12.0Gbps writes and 1.7/1.6 Million IOPS (r/w)… or precisely the same as the 4TB’er. Making Corsair obviously more conservative than Crucial in their specifications. Which is something we would have never thought possible. In either case the new 2400MT/s R.G. TLC NAND has indeed put a bit of new spin on the mainstream and enthusiast marketplace and made 4TB capacity variants not only useable but arguably both a better value and a higher performance option for the real world. Once again proving that theory may be clean and simple… but the real-world rarely is clean nor all that simple.

In summary, the MP700 Pro SE 4TB offers better overall real world performance. It offers better overall durability. It only takes up one M.2 port instead of two. It results in an easier to maintain data backup schedule. It even costs less than a pair of MP700 Pro SE 2TBs… and its cost is within a rounding error of a pair of Crucial T705s. That is a lot, and we mean lot, to like. So much so that if your budget can stretch the extra ten bucks over a pair of T705 2TB’ers it pretty much is the better option – especially on Intel builds. Put another way, the new MP700 Pro SE has changed our personal preferences and we highly recommend this amazing value and amazingly fast drive. Buy it and you will not be disappointed.